More of the Same on the Colliery Dams
Ron Bolin: August 25, 2015
At yesterday’s (Aug. 24) second meeting of the recently appointed Colliery Dams Select Committee it became apparent that the Committee was on a course for implosion. Established in late July of this year to try to make some sense of the comedy of misinformation and power politics which this very expensive project has become, the Select Committee appears to have discovered that their status has not proven to shield them from the sloth long associated with the project and that they are not getting the kind of timely information and feedback which is necessary for its purposes to prevail. Reports and maps defining the configuration limits of the new spillway and the limitations determined by the dig and drill exercises were unavailable as were even the general parameters of the limited, cost plus, bids which were due to be received before the CDSC meeting.
This latter point is no small thing. Significant bid openings should take place at the date and time stated to be the be date and time of the bid closing. They should be open to the public and the purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate that, at the least, the timing rules have been followed to the letter and that no late or altered bids are accepted. Thus there is a definitive record of who made bids and the amount of the bid provided, even though in complex works the low bid may not win, and doubly so in this case as any eventual “low” bidder will be disguised behind a cost plus contract. Still, though the minimal bid information should have been available at yesterday’s CDSC meeting it was not. It was reported that the bid opening would not take place until today… a very curious procedure. What is the reason for delaying any bid opening even by a minute?
The CDSC was established with the following Terms of Reference:
Click to access TOR_Colliery%20Dams%20Select%20Committee.pdf
And has had the following Meetings:
August 24, 2015 Special Open Colliery Dams Select Committee Agenda
Click to access SOCDSC150824A.pdf
August 18, 2015 Special Open Colliery Dams Select Committee Agenda
Click to access SOCDSC150818A.pdf
While I wish the CDSC well, it remains to be seen whether the cooperation they receive from the City is sufficient to warrant further Committee participation in the Colliery Dams project.
I look forward to your comments on this ongoing situation and to the questions which should be asked about this project and its development from day one on.
A very interesting and, in my mind, related document on municipal project management can be found at the web site of the Auditor General for Local Governments (AGLG) in a Report recently completed by the AGLG on the District of Sechelt.
Click to access Audit-Topic-3-Report-2-Sechelt.pdf
There is a lot of relevant food for thought in this document. Your comments on this document are likewise solicited.
End
Posts and Comments on Nanaimo Governance 
The District of Sechelt reorganizes:
http://www.district.sechelt.bc.ca/CityHall/CurrentNews/tabid/359/Article/1788/organizational-and-management-review-released.aspx
Having read Mr.Rieper’s long-winded letter to Council, I concluded that even the B.C. Dam Safety Branch wouldn’t go so far as to include all dams in the vicinity, referred to by him, and wondered why he and other doom-sayers don’t include references to the expensive City funded Golder Report which clearly downplays the risks. Golder’s opinion was backed-up with solid engineering, not hysteria!
Ron Palmer: Could you please give a reference to Mr. Rieper’s “long-winded letter” and why it was mention in the context of this posting?
Summer’s almost over, the food trucks have done their damage: butter is out! marg is in! Autumn is in the offing: time to get serious!
So far the gossipers have lost the Colliery Dams and that’s only the beginning.
I’ve lived in Nanaimo since 1998. I was NRGH’s architect from 1959-63, and I love the place . . .
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/walk/walk/Daily%20walk.html
. . . but Nanaimo desperately needs kick-ass, (thanqxz Juliet, the appropriate epithet, it’s way beyond family), and it just doesn’t look like it’s comin’!
Putting all our faith in the fab five’s (Cllr. Fuller, Cllr. Bestwick, Cllr. Hong, Cllr. Kipp. Cllr. Yoachim) political clout hasn’t worked out!
For all your Facebook photos Gord you’re just another cold bum on a hot seat and the sooner the next election comes around the better.
What’s the latest gambit? Colliery dams! C$6m (cost plus contracts have a “cost-creep” tendency ) to rip out trees, gouge another spill-way and await the millennium flood, if it ever comes? Hell, does anyone have the balls to do justice to that beautiful little park on the hill behind our pretty little Harbour City by the Salish Sea?
If you want to make yourself useful Gord, put away your damn camera, and start doing what you were elected to do!
There are so many issues, other than the damn dams, that you are conveniently brushing under the carpet: i.e. bloated over paid bureaucracy, the Strategic Action Research Centre, SARC, (I double-up laughing every time I read that and cannot help completing the acronym: SARCASTIC!). It’s just another over blown C$17m office building for heaven’s sake (oh but the view) as Franklyn Street languishes!
All the jingle aside, I would put at the top of priority issues the bloated, over-paid over populated bureaucracy beholden to no one. They are, and should be, clerks for heaven’s sake. Pay and treat them accordingly!
Painting the Port Theatre: what a thoughtless waste. Whose bright idea is that? Visually it makes little different other than a eye-blinding glare on a sunny day. Bare concrete has survived since the Romans so its not that the building is about to crumble. That building is as plug-ugly as I’ve ever seen, and I lived in Mexico City before I came here, so I know ugly when I see it. Presenting its ass on the Plaza where the entrance should be is a big mistake! Put money where it should be: re-position the entrance on the Plaza.
Then there’s the money draining VICC! What happened to FPN. VIU has the impertinence to claim it is not interested in moving in. Note to provost Witty. Such a decision belongs to the community and not VIU’s to make!
The list goes on. Now another old person’s committee has been called to figure out what to do with Terminal: wow it’s taken so long! I can see and, oh the noise, of traffic on Terminal and The Parkway. Terminal has a magnitude of traffic beyond the Parkway: there’s no silver bullet there!
Nanaimo bowl, as Cllr. Sherry used to call it, was conceived and built in the days before MBA’s and other such clap-trap. Mayor Frank Ney did the damage, his obsession with sprawl, decades ago! It going to be hard to do something with Terminal!
What amazes me is Nanaimo’s bloated docile voting public. Well, I mean there are a few gossipers: I’ll be interested to see who turns up 5.30pm Monday at the conference center entrance! But, I mean the town has 80,000+/- at least two thirds have a vote: What’s up?